Star Wars Origami

Copyright & Intellectual Property Concerns

Welcome. I made this website to show off my origami and freely give my diagrams to other similarly interested people in the world. If you're them, enjoy. This page isn't about you.

Copyright's a tricky thing. Everybody's heard of "Fair Use", but that's often misunderstood. I sure don't understand all of it. Bet you don't, either. Intellectual Property is even more nebulous. When you throw money in the mix, things get more complicated. High-priced lawyers and drawn-out court cases have the final decision. Wouldn't it be easier if everybody just played nice?

A lot of my designs are based on other people's ideas. People with really High-Priced Lawyers. If they want me to stop, I'll have to stop. Sure, there's no Origami merchandising in Star Wars -- I could probably call them "BowTie Spaceships" or "CAT-CATs" and get away with it. But I refuse to sell Star Wars models because I don't feel that I have the right. But then, the novel origami designs were my idea. I worked hard to design them and even harder to diagram them.

Origami is an art and a science. The folded results are often three-dimensional sculptures. Some are geometrically precise and others are indescribably organic. I have seen diagrams that I want to hang on the wall. Crease patterns are both mathematically beautiful and artistically evocative. I tend to agree with the idea that Origami Diagrams are somewhere between sewing patterns and sheet music; the papers are designed to teach how to perform a work. The designs are mine, but you put your effort and skill into the end results.

Once you actually fold it into origami, it's yours. Fold it in metal. Put it on YouTube. Glue it to your shirt. Turn it in as Art assignment. Burn it. whatever. You can tell people "look what I folded." But don't tell people you designed it, because you didn't. A single line of FOLDED BY <YOU >, DESIGNED BY PHILIP SCHULZ will make my heart swell with pride. If you are profiting off it, drop me a line. I'm not greedy; sometimes Internet cred is better than money.

But the diagrams/crease patterns/instructions should be copyrightable. Diagrams are a distillation of the folding process. Crease patterns can look chaotic, but they reveal the underlying structure of the final piece. I find drawing the diagrams is lot more work than folding them. You have to find a way to convey a motion with a minimum amount of explanation. Different diagramming styles are as unique and recognizable as the folding styles themselves. You can't erase my name and slap yours on. They're not "traditional" or "found" models. Don't sell them on Ebay as an origami e-book. Don't trace them and pretend your copying errors are a substantial change. Don't water-color in the lines and pretend it's transformatively different. If you put them up on your website, give me a name credit and a link to my site. You want to publish them or sell them? Contact me and we'll work something out.

What about substantial changes and fair use?

If you fix all my typos; thanks, but not really transformative. Skip a couple steps or add a new one; people do that all the time, but it's not substantial. However, if you come up with a better way to do it; great, that's new! Changed a spaceship into an elephant; Super! You've just created something! It's yours! You too can be Internet famous! The tricky word is "substantially". Origami Diagrams are often incomplete. I always tweak the designs a little afterward. Show it to me and I will gladly talk it over with you.

Are you using it as a critical commentary or parody? Really? I'm pretty sure that I'm already ironically commenting on futuristic high-technology in cinema being replicated in ancient cultural traditions of paperfolding. Andy Warhol turned Campbell's soup into Art, but he wasn't competing by selling soup, and you ain't Warhol.

TL;DR version

Don't be a jerk.
You can't make money off my stuff without talking to me first.
WE can't make money off Star Wars without talking to Uncle George first.
If you use my stuff, give me credit.
If you make it better, brag to me.
Roy Lichtenstein was a jerk.